Adam Price: the chef who cooked up Borgen

Adam Price is the writer of the hit political drama Borgen. But he also has another success up his sleeve – as one of Denmark's best-known TV chefs and restaurateurs (see his recipe for a Borgen feast below)

Adam Price: the ancestors of the Danish TV writer and chef came from England. Photograph: DR

There aren't many writers who wouldn't welcome a comparison between their political drama and The West Wing. But Adam Price, creator of Borgen, is politely shaking off the suggestion that the show is a Danish version of Aaron Sorkin's White House saga. "The West Wing is about a football team all playing for the president; Borgen is about characters standing on each column of modern democracy and actually working against each other," he says. "I'm a big fan of The West Wing, but I truly believe this series is quite different."

That he is in a position to do so, however, is a pleasant surprise: the intricacies of Danish coalition politics were not expected to travel well. "We were told to really lower our expectations when it came to an international audience for the series," Price says. "Probably Sweden and Norway would take it out of politeness, but that would be it."

Instead, the travails of prime minister Birgitte Nyborg have become a BBC4 sensation, with Borgen winning a Bafta and viewing figures topping a million – significant numbers for any subtitled drama, but particularly one outside the crime genre. "These are universal conflicts," says Price. "Politicians everywhere know that when a story breaks, that's a crucial point for government. They know that heads have to fly."

But Borgen's success comes also from its focus on Nyborg's home and private life, as she tries to balance political ambition and parental responsibilities; desire for power with the demands of a relationship, a family, her own conscience. The first series, with its charming glimpses of a normal, albeit particularly blessed, family life was irresistible for that reason. If there is a criticism of the second, which finishes this weekend and has seen the prime minister struggling with the realities of her divorce, it's that we have perhaps spent too little time around the kitchen table. It feels as if the series has suffered from Philip and Birgitte's split, just as the characters have.

So was Price tempted to keep the pair together? "That's the big dilemma of writing and watching a drama – that if you put them back together at the end of the series it would have pleased us on one level, and bored us on another," says Price. "It's not very dramatic watching two people have a great time together and being very happy." The writer describes the first season of the show as a tragedy: Nyborg the sweet, smiling woman we first encounter, gradually losing everything as her political collateral rises.

It is all important that the show is about a woman, says Price, who refers several times to the idea of living in "an age of availability" and the demands that places on our lives outside of work. Borgen is also, notably, about women beyond the political realm: Katrine the young reporter wondering about whether she can combine career and family; Hanne the experienced hack, estranged from her daughter and self-medicating with alcohol.

But while making women's lives central to the show is gripping, does it also run the risk of reducing their achievements and failures to simple questions of career v domestic life? "I wouldn't call myself a feminist, but the series is definitely some kind of feminist project," says Price. For the first two series, the show was written exclusively by a team of male writers. "We don't intend to say that women can't have it all. We had those fears behind us – there's definitely a risk that we could end up with a very conservative message, of the woman returning to domestic life and her love life, doing 'the right thing' and choosing her private life over her career. We didn't want to send that message, of course, but we had to show that struggle."

In 2011, not long after the initial series of Borgen aired in Denmark, the country elected its first female prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt. How much was that down to Price? "We preceded her by a few months," he laughs. "I don't really think we influenced the election; it would be too much to think the Danes got used to the idea that we could have a woman in office and then elected her."

In any case, Thorning-Schmidt is likely to outlast Nyborg in the job: the third and final series is currently airing in Denmark. Price has no worries about what to do when Nyborg's political career comes to an end. You might think that creating an internationally feted, much-discussed political drama would constitute a full-time job, but Price is also an extremely successful Danish TV chef and restaurateur.

"People in Denmark are also a bit confused," he admits. "I don't know that everyone knows that the guy writing Borgen is also the one standing in front of the camera whipping up a béarnaise sauce." He will also be making a trip to the UK for the Danish equivalent of Who Do You Think You Are? – Price's ancestors left London for Denmark in the late 18th century. And then, fittingly, he has some "nice offers" to consider from British television.

But there will perhaps be one adjustment Price will need to make when it comes to the setting of his dramas: British viewers have long been puzzled by the setup of the Nyborg household, in which the bedroom apparently leads off the kitchen. Price is amused by this: "It's quite typical," he says. "The prime minister and her husband would have been a modern, quite young couple, with very young kids and they would have bought this old house with traditional rooms and perhaps torn down the walls to make a big, open living space." But why is the kitchen next to the bedroom? "That's because the house is not that big! We found a house in a part of Copenhagen that's not particularly rich. We didn't want to place her socially. We wanted her to be in contact with the real people."

Which is, of course, the secret of both Borgen and Birgitte's great appeal.

A Borgen feast

Celebrate this weekend's Borgen finale with Adam Price's recipe for roast bacon and parsley sauce, followed by his zingy lemon mousse, a popular election night feast among Danes.

Roast the bacon rashers in the oven at around 200C/gas mark 6, or in a very large frying pan, until they are brown and crispy.

For the sauce, melt the butter in a casserole dish, add the flour and let it cook for around two minutes at a low heat. Slowly add the milk to make a bechamel sauce. Add nutmeg to taste, along with salt and pepper. Adjust the consistency with the cream and let it simmer for a few minutes. It needs to be silky and quite thick and creamy. Add finely chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon.

Serve with boiled potatoes. Do not put the sauce on the fried bacon – that will spoil the crispiness.

Soften the gelatine in cold water. Whisk the eggs until they are stiff, before whisking in the sugar.

Leaving the water that has stuck to the sheets, melt the gelatine in a casserole. Add the lemon zest and juice to the gelatine, stirring all the time.

Whisk 300ml of cream until it is whipped, and fold the egg whites, cream and lemon-gelatine mixture together.

Put the mousse in a bowl or in four individual glasses. Let the mousse chill for at least three to four hours in the fridge.

Before serving, whisk the last 200ml of cream, and then decorate the mousse with whipped cream and lemon balm or caramelised julienne-cut lemon zest: let the zest simmer in a syrup made from equal quantities of sugar and water for 15-20 minutes, and then leave to cool.